Rise of sociology as an intellectual tradition. Classical tradition in sociology of the XIX century (141082)

«Rise of sociology as an intellectual tradition. Classical tradition in sociology of the XIX century»

Minsk 2008

1. Rise of sociology as an intellectual tradition

Since
ancient times man has been interested in issues of his own living
among other people. Why do people try to join living with other
people, not without? What makes them fix borders, form separate
states and struggle with each other? Why do some people possess all
benefits, others are deprived of them?

Searching
for answers to these questions forced ancient thinkers to focus their
attention on man and the society where he lives in. Emergence of
sociology is obliged to the concept “society”, its
theoretical development and use in practice. Attempts to comprehend
optimal ways of governing, social order, people’s effective
activities were first made by ancient Chinese and Indian
philosophers.

Antique
philosophers made their contribution by suggesting new ideas which
are now considered fundamentals of sociology. For instance, Platoand
Aristotle developed a doctrine of human and the society; their works
initiated studies of certain social institutions such as the state,
family and law.

Following
the principle of social division of labour,
Plato
(427-347 BC) created a first in the world theory of stratification
according to which the society is divided into three classes: higher
class consisting of wise men who govern the state; middle class or
warriors who defend the society from disorder, and lower class
consisting of craftsmen and peasants. Anyway, in his theory there was
no place for slaves whose destiny was hard work considered as
unworthy by free citizens.

Aristotle
considered middle class a foot-hold of order. To his mind, the state
is better governed if egoistic interests of the rich are limited, the
poor are not excluded from government, and middle class is greater
and stronger than the rich and the poor.

Traditionally
the origins of sociology are seen in
European
philosophy of the XVIII century, a period that is referred to as
the
Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. This
movement advocated rationality
as a means to establish an authoritative system of ethics,
aesthetics,
and knowledge.
The intellectual leaders of this movement regarded themselves as
courageous and elite, and saw their purpose as leading the world
toward progress
and out of a long period of doubtful tradition,
full of irrationality, superstition and tyranny. The Enlightenment
also provided a framework for the American
and French
Revolutions, as well as leading to the rise of capitalism
and birth of socialism.
The XVIII century also saw a continued rise of empirical
philosophical ideas, and their application to political
economy, government
and sciences such as physics,
chemistry
and biology.
However, investigations of this age were far from being systemic and
integral. Lots of important issues were not paid attention to, that’s
why achievements in learning social phenomena were less considerable
as compared to other sciences.

Of
utmost interest of the period became study of social communities and
processes of their development and functioning. The study was caused
by two factors. The first factor was industrial development of
European countries; the second one was that all spheres of human
activities became more complicated that raised problems of people’s
interactions and their government, creation of social order in the
society etc. When problems were realized and sounded, prerequisites
for developing a new science appeared, science which could study
groups of people and their behaviour in groups, human interactions
and their results.

As
origins of sociology are seen in spiritual and political ideas of the
Enlightenment and reaction to the French Revolution, French thinkers,
English and German philosophers who worked and created in that period
are considered direct predecessors of sociological knowledge.

Of
German philosophers Immanuel Kant
(1724-1804) is more often recollected due to his contribution to
development of social problems, in particular problems of
personality. Kant believed that man is an ambivalent being by his
nature: he is both good and bad, honest and dishonest, fair and
unfair, free and dependent. To his mind, man’s natural negative
character is hidden and displayed in those living conditions which
make man reveal his vices. But man is striving for self-perfection
and his ally is reason that helps man to overcome his negative
qualities. Kant considered that harmony between human and the society
is achieved if man overcomes his vices by obeying laws and moral
norms.

Georg Hegel (1770-1831)
made this dialectics more generalized. His aim was to define basic
determinants of historic development so that he could examine
peculiarities of its realization in different historic periods and
show correlation of historic necessity and people’s conscious
activities. He drew a picture of social reality all parts of which
(objective and subjective, dynamic and static, material and ideal)
are interrelated by a dialectic method.

Of
French philosophers one can mention Charles Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Saint-Simon
and others.Ch. Montesquieu (1689-1755)
underlined importance of comparative research of social phenomena.
J.-J. Rousseau
(1712-1778) distinguished classes in the society and believed that
man’s nature is good but man is “spoilt” by the
society. Into the basis of harmonic arrangement of the society he put
social agreement, i.e. consensus of people as reflection of their
common will which is expressed in laws.

Saint-Simon (1760-1825)
was possibly the first to suggest planning as a way to run economy.
To his mind, social problems could be solved by moral and religious
reforming, based on employers’ good will to better the working
conditions. In 1822 he published his work, Plan de traveaux scientifiques nécessaires pour réorganiser la société(Планнаучныхработ, необходимыхдляреорганизацииобщес­тва),
written with Auguste Comte. In the book the thinkers suggested an
idea of developing a new science of the society which, by analogy
with physics, should be based on observation, experiment and other
methods of natural sciences. Initially, the science was given the
name of social physics.

By
that time a social theory presented a mixed spectrum of various views
in which both basic and additional motives were combined; basic
motives bore rational and irrational character while economic,
political, legal and moral interests constituted the entity of
additional ones. Those views reflected thinkers and researchers’
outlook, their ideological positions and ways of studying social
problems.

In
this context legacy by A. Comte
(1798-1857), the initiator of sociology, was not an exception. There
are two reasons why A. Comte is acknowledged as the founding father
of sociology. First, he developed a systematic and
hierarchical classification of all sciences and by including
sociology into them, he gave grounds for establishing its autonomy as
a discipline; second, in 1839 he changed the name of social physics
into sociology. His fundamental works are Cours de philosophie positive
in 6 volumes (1830-1842), Système de politique positive
(1850-1854).

A.
Comte’s legacy includes the
law of three phases, his contribution
to further development of the theory of an industrial society started
by Saint-Simon.
It is by his statement of this law that he is best known in the
English-speaking world. The law says that the society has gone
through three phases:

theological,
or
military authority;

metaphysical,
or feudal
authority;

scientific,
or positive phase seen as an industrial civilization.

In
the theological
phase man’s
place in the society and the society’s restrictions upon man
were referred to God.
The metaphysic phase involved
justification of universal
rights
as something on a higher plane than the authority of any human ruler
could countermand. The scientific
phase is that one in which people
could find solutions to social problems and bring them into force
despite of the proclamations of human
rights
or prophecy of the
will of God.
For
its time, the idea of a scientific phase was considered up-to-date.

A.
Comte also formulated the law of three phases: human
development (social
progress) progresses from a theological
stage, in which nature was mythically conceived and man sought the
explanation of natural phenomena from supernatural beings, through a
metaphysical
stage in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure
forces and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them
to the final positive
stage in which all abstract and obscure forces are discarded, and
natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship. This
progress is forced through the development of human mind and
increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the
understanding of world. Due to it, A. Comte thought that
industrialization
is the result of a scientific way of thinking spread out in all
spheres of human life but not of technical and economic progress.

However,
he rejected the role of general theory in sociology: instead of
theoretic generalization of empiric data to make up a whole of them,
he presented the society as a simple entity of interconnected facts.
He didn’t clearly determine the subject of a new science;
either he didn’t find its scientific method to learn laws of
social development.